


Venn Diagram

by Runespoor



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, M/M, shippy parading as gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:02:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slade has been a witness of the push and pull between Batman and his partners since the beginning. Basically, non-graphic Batfamily identity-porn issues aided by Deathstroke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Venn Diagram

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the nebulous before-Bruce's-death that includes such fun as Nightwing One Year Later, Cass being a ~~n evil~~ drugged-up murderer, and Rose in the Titans (actually, that last is okay). Title from the Nightwing #80-#82 arc.

With the first, it could have been a coincidence. It was anything but, but Slade can see Bruce tricking himself into believing it.

It was amusing to watch, when Dick valiantly ignored the attraction and admiration and awe into sublimation. Slade isn't sure how long the sublimation would hold, even today, if Bruce made a move on Dick. No longer than a gasp, at most.

It couldn't be a coincidence, but when it was only Grayson Slade didn't think past the amusement. Batman had raised the kid for it, and the kid had been more than cooperative in it, and it was as tragic and hilarious as the slight prickle breaking over Robin's skin when Deathstroke chuckled at the Titans.

He could've dismissed the first as an accident, Batman only realizing too late how he and the kid had fumbled themselves into it. But he's seen more than Dick now.

Batgirl's only as obvious as a fervent worshiper. She looks up toward any footage Slade has of Batman and she grows distant and focused. Her lips fall open as her pupils feverishly follow each of his moves.

She looks at him the same way sometimes, and she likes it when Slade puts his hand on her head or her shoulder.

Dick did, too, and Slade wonders what justifications the people who work with Bruce have to make come into play to be able to withstand it. He doesn't need to wonder about Bruce's; he knows well enough to draw them in the negative of Dick's.

It's something he only suspects in the savage dark girl Nightwing trips over any time he stumbles further away from Batman's influence. He's heard of her, and they've crossed ways, and he can see both why Grayson's compass points to her when he loses Batman's north, as certainly as it points to _him_ , and how she simmers at Batman herself. Slade's tempted to call her an adult in all parts of her life except this one; it would make him laugh if it was any more of a surprise.

When he meets the last one – the one who died, the kid old Bruce replaced his too beautiful, too adult, too dangerous Dick with – it takes only a handful of seconds before the smile starts curling his lips.

Slade's never had the opportunity to meet that one before; Batman'd dug his claws deep enough that there was no Titans for the boy. After all, the Titans were the pretext Bruce had found to make Dick leave.

It was funny because it was the reverse that was true, Slade felt; he'd learned the story years later, when Dick was trying to see if Slade couldn't be his replacement Batman – and Slade had let him, wasn't in any way opposed to the perspective, really. Dick was desperate, needy, loyal to the soul and given to bouts of gratefulness that would've been even more pathetic to hear about second-hand if he'd found someone else to attach himself to. He'd let Dick try to mash what little was left of himself into something that could lock into what Deathstroke wanted from him, keeping an eye on him, giving him a chance at happiness.

Bruce had fired Dick because Dick was growing apart from him, but Slade, leaning over the kid and watching the sweat on his chest work with the catches in his throat, had thought that maybe Bruce had removed Dick because he only feared that Dick was his.

When he meets the last one, it takes a second more before he loses the smile. The boy is breathing and raging Batman's name in a way that Dick, for all his effusiveness, has trained out of himself for almost as long as Slade's known him.

Not so with this boy. Grayson calls out for Batman with his eyes and his body when he doesn't notice, this one-- it takes all of half a minute before he spits the name Batman like it's a knife, but it's obvious he's hurting himself with it. He might hurt his opponent as well if he was facing the Bat daddy, or Nightwing. But Slade's not in love with Batman, so he sees the proprietary way the boy cuts himself on the issue.

Slade's wearing the suit, and the boy tells him it's not his with the ease of someone used to seeing it slide on and off, used to snapping the encasing shut or open, used to deciding whether it'll stay on or not.

The boy's tapping his thigh with a gun, and he wants Slade to catch him.

“C'mon, you wear Batman's cast offs, and you're not gonna play?” he taunts.

He's shifting on his feet. Spoiling for a fight or for a fuck.

Slade thinks of Rose and his smile takes on a different taste.

“Not sure I'm in the mood for that game, kiddo.”

“Name's Jason,” the boy says as he swings his guns at the bat symbol on Slade's chest.

Later he sucks on Slade's tongue and he flexes his hands in Batman's cape, obliviously rhythmical, and he comes with a sob when Slade says his name.

After that night, Slade thinks differently of Bruce and all the kids, all his kids in love with him. And when he's with Batgirl, he reminds himself that Rose is with the Titans. And Bruce never cared for the Titans.


End file.
